Kilometer 101

<b>A new collection of short fiction and nonfiction by a Russian master of bittersweet humor dramatic irony and poignant insights into contemporary life.</b><br><br>The town of Tarusa lies 101 kilometers outside Moscow far enough to have served under Soviet rule as a place where former political prisoners and other &#147;undesirables&#148; could legally settle. Lying between the center of power and the provinces between the modern urban capital and the countryside Tarusa is the perfect place from which to observe a Russia that in Maxim Osipov&#146;s words &#147;changes a lot [in the course of a decade] but in two centuries&#151;not at all.&#148; The stories and essays in this volume&#151;a follow-up to his debut in English <i>Rock Paper Scissors</i>&#151;tackle major questions of modern life in and beyond Russia with Osipov&#146;s trademark blend of daring and subtlety. Deceit political pressure ethnic discrimination the urge to emigrate and the fear of abandoning one&#146;s home as well as myriad generational debts and conflicts are as complexly woven through these pieces as they are through the lives of Osipov&#146;s fellow Russians and through our own. What binds the prose in this volume is not only a set of concerns however but also Osipov&#146;s penetrating insights and fearless realism. &#147;Dreams fall away one after another&#148; he writes in the opening essay &#147;some because they come true but most because they prove pointless.&#148; Yet as he reminds us in the final essay when viewed from ground level &#147;life tends not towards depletion towards zero but on the contrary towards repletion fullness.&#148;